Last month, 18 commercial and industrial projects with values of $100 million each entered planning including a $300 million hospital in New York City and a $200 million hospital in the Cleveland suburb of Beachwood, Ohio.

With a slight month-to-month drop of 0.5%, the Dodge Momentum Index, which measures nonresidential building projects in planning, is now down 8.5% from April of last year. The report issued by Dodge Data & Analytics has been shown to lead construction spending for the sector by a full year.

The monthly score included a 1.0% slip in the commercial component while the institutional side was actually up a touch. For the year though, institutional is 13.9% lower compared to the 4.7% slide by commercial.

However, a statement issued by Aanchal Desai for Dodge, a provider of analytics and software-based workflow integration solutions for the construction industry, damped the raising of alarm bells somewhat by noting that over the past several months the index has been in flux with neither strong gains or losses.

"This suggests that there continues to be a reasonably healthy number of projects in the planning pipeline to support a moderate level of construction activity in the coming months," concluded the statement.